1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally directed to a wrap-around carrier for carrying a plurality of beverage containers. In particular the invention is directed to a reinforced handle structure for such a carrier in which a drop-down partition is formed from a portion of the inner top panel.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Carriers with drop-down partitions formed from the inner top panel of the carrier have been in commerical use for a number of years as illustrated by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,043,095, and 4,155,449. One problem associated with such carriers is that, in using one of the layers of paperboard to form the drop-down partition, only a single ply of paperboard was left in some areas surrounding the handle. These are the areas in which tearing and failure are most likely to occur. Heavier paperboard has been used in an attempt to overcome this problem. However, heavier paperboard is more expensive and the entire carrier must be made of the heavier paperboard when it may not be needed on most of the carrier except for the handle area.
FIG. 2 of this application illustrates the handle structure of a carrier which has been marketed prior to the present invention. In that carrier, the design allows for double or triple ply thicknesses in some areas around the handle openings. However, other areas around the handle openings are only of a single ply thickness. As long as this carrier was fabricated from paperboard of a sufficient thickness it performed satisfactorily. However, to reduce the cost of the package and make the package commercially more competitive, it is desirable to fabricate such carriers from as light a weight paperboard as possible without losing the desired performance characteristics of the carrier.
It is an object of the present invention to enable carriers with drop-down partitions of the type described above to be made out of lighter weight paperboard without adversely affecting the performance characteristic of the carrier. In fact the use of the present invention has permitted these carriers to be made from 24 point paperboard when carriers using a handle structure such as that illustrated in FIG. 2 of this application were made from 27 point paperboard.